{"id":4780,"date":"2010-09-26T19:19:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T02:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=4780"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:58:54","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:58:54","slug":"representations-of-the-future-with-graphs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2010\/09\/26\/representations-of-the-future-with-graphs\/","title":{"rendered":"Representations of the Future with Graphs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Graphs<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

I collected some graphs that attempt to represent how the future comes to be while I was preparing for a talk at the University of Michigan’s “Future of Technology” conference, from which I’ve just returned. The graphs are simple ways to represent the path from now into the future and what makes “then” the future and different from “now.” I drew what I had in mind as you see above while I was teasing out something interesting to say for the talk. All along the way I was hoping to be able to show some film clips that I’ve been gathering \u2014\u00a0film clips of speculative futures and science-based fictions. The talk \u2014\u00a0it was only 15 minutes exactly \u2014\u00a0was called 9 Ways of Seeing the Future.<\/p>\n

Here they are.<\/p>\n

\n\"Idea,<\/a><\/p>\n
\nOne.<\/strong> The future starts with an idea, and you try it out and test it, and then when it works that means you’ve accomplished something new and then you’re in the future. James Dyson is the exemplar of this kind of future-making because he prototypes his stuff insanely. ((How else do you make vacuum cleaners that suck so much?))\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\"Up<\/a><\/p>\n
\nTwo.<\/strong> The future starts at the origin and then goes up, and to the right, which is better\/brighter\/smaller\/bigger\/longer\/faster than the origin, so it’s in the future.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\"Exponentially<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThree.<\/strong>I got the scale on the left wrong, but this is the Moore’s Law future which goes up and to the right like Two, but it does so exponentially faster, so you get an intensely better future when compared to the normal up-and-to-the-right future.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\"Gartner<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFour.<\/strong> The Gartner Hype Curve, where whatever the future is, it is sure to be oversold and overpromised, leading to the *trough of disillusionment and despair, after which the future sort of becomes more reasonable than the hype and slowly productizes itself. ((I’m still waiting for the Jet Pack future.))\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\"Future<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFive.<\/strong> The future that distributes over space and time \u2014 William Gibson’s *sandwich spread truism that says the future is here already, but it’s just not evenly distributed. Presumably it starts in places like Silicon Valley, although he might argue that it also starts in the back alley bar in Mogadishu or some other shit hole, seeing as how things are going these days.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\"Auger<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSix.<\/strong> James Auger<\/a>‘s drawing of the product future where there are many possible *technologies that will anchor themselves into a future present, as well as alternative futures that may lie off-axis somewhere. I’m still trying to figure this one out. Maybe I’ll get the chance at the Design Fiction conference.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\"graphs-of-the-future-923185617-0008\"<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSeven.<\/strong> From A Survey of Human-Computer Interaction Design in Science Fiction Movies<\/a> which describes the future as a collaboration\/circulation of ideas between engineers\/scientists and film makers. It’s a curious, provocative paper, thin on synthesis (it’s a survey, after all). I like the diagram most of all. Even in its simplicity it provides a nice appetizer for capturing some of the rich stew of David A. Kirby’s diegetic prototypes.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\nEight.<\/strong> Colin Milburn’s Modifiable Futures: Science Fiction at the Bench<\/a> is perhaps graphed dynamically<\/a> in which he describes the future as particular kinds of “mods” or modifications to things that exist in the here and now. You know you’re in the future when the normal, plain thing has become kitted-out and enhanced, perhaps on the street. (link to video<\/a>)\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

And so then I noticed that these are representations of the future that are rather flat instrumental and parametricized visions of the future and the route to it. And I’m wondering \u2014\u00a0rather than parametric and numerical and quantified representations of the futures \u2014\u00a0don’t use graphs \u2014\u00a0what about stories that avoid the problematic time-goes-from-left-to-right, or that there is only one coordinate for a specific future. An easier way of acknowledging multiple simultaneous futures, and multiple possible futures and that the future is a lived, embodied situation rather than the result of miniaturization or optimization. The future is for us and we live in experiences and stories \u2014\u00a0not in aspirations for technologies themselves.<\/p>\n

Seeing as representations prescribe what we consider possible and even reasonable, having a richer, thicker, more lived representation to help imagine other sorts of futures \u2014 and not just bigger\/brighter\/smaller\/lighter ones with new products that we buy to replace the old, perfectly good ones we bought six months ago \u2014\u00a0we might look toward stories about the future that you can’t graph on a piece of paper.<\/p>\n

This is where the Ninth<\/strong> representation comes in \u2014\u00a0science fiction film. This of course does not exclude other strong representations of the future like science fiction writing, science and technology journalism, and all other kinds of literature I’m sure you’re thinking about. Just happens that right now I’m excited by science fiction film (err..have been for quite some time) and I’m focusing on that.<\/p>\n

So, to close out my 15 minute talk and my 1000 word blog post, I shared a short excerpt from Volume 7 of a collection of annotated DVDs<\/a> the Laboratory’s Media Theory department is creating based on representations of the near future in science fiction film. In this one I look at some of the signs and signals about The Future that are represented in some favorite films.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Why do I blog this?<\/strong> The main point of the talk was, for me, to think through another reason why I see design fiction as a useful idiom for doing design. What I concluded is that choosing how we imagine and represent the future is crucial \u2014\u00a0and not peripheral \u2014 to our ability to solve problems. Graphs are good, but I wanted to establish that there are other ways of productively and fruitfully representing what can be in order to materialize ones ideas. So \u2014\u00a0science fiction as much more than a distraction from the hassles of figuring out where your idea is on the productization scale, or determining when transistor counts will go up to the next order of magnitude and then never really wondering why that might be useful in a save-the-planet sort of way.<\/p>\n

We seem to be pattern recognizers and so the templates and processes and frameworks in which our imaginations live determine to a large extent the possible things we can think of and the measures by which we judge them. ((Which, parenthetically, may be that the best thing one can learn to do is learn see the world through different lenses and from different perspectives \u2014\u00a0but maybe even more importantly is to know how and when to establish those different perspectives and then help others see \u2014\u00a0and then think \u2014\u00a0differently.))<\/p>\n

Thanks to everyone at the Taubman College of Architecture<\/a> and University of Michigan for the invitation and for enduring my hand drawn slides in a sea of luscious, expertly and painstakingly rendered 3D models of parametric architectures.<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I collected some graphs that attempt to represent how the future comes to be while I was preparing for a talk at the University of Michigan’s “Future of Technology” conference, from which I’ve just returned. The graphs are simple ways to represent the path from now into the future and what makes “then” the future … Continue reading Representations of the Future with Graphs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,39,50,52,53,136,152,173,176,186],"tags":[1188,516,570,884,914,940,972,1046,1231,1104],"yoast_head":"\nRepresentations of the Future with Graphs - Near Future Laboratory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2010\/09\/26\/representations-of-the-future-with-graphs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Representations of the Future with Graphs - Near Future Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I collected some graphs that attempt to represent how the future comes to be while I was preparing for a talk at the University of Michigan’s “Future of Technology” conference, from which I’ve just returned. 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